There’s a part of me that hopes this is an unintended consequence, but there is also part of me that besides having been considered as a possibility, it was hoped for to make the threat stronger.
I am not sure there are too many things worse than when parents lose the trust of their offspring.
Leaving their village for parts unknown and with the possibility of never seeing your friends and relatives again, children trusted in their parents and began the trip north with them, I’m sure, telling the children they had nothing to fear as their parents would be there.
I am sure at the most frightening times the presence and the promise of the continued presence of parents kept the kids calm and assured.
But then they get to the border and not only do the parents go one way while the kids in another, but for days into weeks there are no words of assurance or any words of any kind from the parents, and as far as the kids know, their parents have brought them to a strange place and abandoned them.
There have already been cases where the reunification was not a joyous moment, but one where the child rejected the parent, or approached them reluctantly.
As the period of separations grows longer, and as the children feel abandoned by parents with no words from them, the perception of parents who lied and abandoned them will grow deeper.
While people opine on how the separation of children from parents will have these kids developing a severely negative opinion of the country that for some will be their home, they also need to consider the damage being done to the parent child relationship.